Confidential police reports and intelligence files show that young teenage white girls in South Yorkshire were used, transported and sold for sex by organised networks of men for more than ten years.

Police, social services and a specialist project identified dozens of group offenders, largely of Pakistani heritage, yet rarely took effective action to protect victims or prosecute their abusers.

Tim Loughton, the former Children’s Minister, blamed “the insidious and misguided hand of political correctness” for allowing sensitivities about the “cultural background” of the perpetrators to hinder a full investigation into “this cancerous abuse of vulnerable children”. His…